Not only do my kids enjoy these activities and have stuck with them happily for a couple of years (at least 2-3 days a week, sometimes 5-6 days a week - 30 min to an hour per day), but these activities integrate beautifully. I can’t say that these programs will work for every kid with dyslexia, but I can say we have had moderate success and improvement with the following programs. I do feel like I have a good footing though in this extremely variable realm.Īll of that said - here is what is working for us right now. I’m just one mom sorting through the resources I can get my hands on. Mostly though programs “weren’t appropriate” or “designed” to help my kid.Īfter going through all of this with Josie and giving up on finding help via a real person, I immersed myself in dyslexia research, special needs books, guides, and methods from Montessori, Muriel Dwyer to Orton Gillingham - plus much in between. Seriously that’s 5 days of tutoring, minimum of four hours each day, to the tune of $2,340 per week. LIPS looks good but was just too expensive to gamble on based on the feedback I’d been getting already.

I got a range of, “I’d feel badly taking your money when it’s probably not going to make a difference” to being told we could always take out a loan to afford the tutoring program ($$$$) but “no guarantees that any progress will be made.” Barton told us through email to try Lindamood Bell. Because my oldest daughter has the trifecta of reading challenges (dyslexia, mild ID and severe articulation errors) no one even wanted to take us on. I spent weeks intently trying to hunt down a tutoring program locally then remotely. I visited a reading clinic at our local university. Cut and paste phonics books from Amazon, Leapfrog DVDs and Hooked on Phonics. We did Snap Words, Heidi Songs and Teachers Pay Teachers worksheets. We listened to audiobooks for an hour or more every day. I bought many, many readers from Lakeshore to Bob Books. I’d email the creators and ask for more direction and when I got a response it was generally “try the preschool version / set, and if that doesn’t work, wait a bit.” Starfall. Over the years, I have tried a plethora of programs and products starting with all the usual boxed curriculums and mainstream phonics sites online. Reading struggles cause ripple effects over everything we do: including but not limited to an inability to do self-guided task cards, research, spell and write independently, and pick up a book for school or pleasure. Our challenge is dyslexia.Īll that to say, it has been a very uphill climb. Turns out our challenge had not been an effort problem, a lack of interest or a result of my personal inadequacies. How can two kids in the same family present with reading struggles so differently, so much so, that I didn’t even recognize it after seeing it firsthand?).

Josie has trouble rhyming words, and Mary does not. Turns out Mary likely suffers from visual dyslexia (whereas Josie’s dyslexia stems from problems in phonological awareness. Turns out reading makes her eyes tired and words move around when she looks too hard (though there’s nothing physically wrong with them). Turns out dyslexia runs in our family on both sides. So, like, what’s the deal Mary? I chalked up her hesitancy with reading to boredom and my pushiness to get going already. Whereas at her age, I was devouring massive novels by 3rd grade (later earning my BA in Creative Writing and now geeking out about teaching my kids all-things literary). She was (is) light years ahead in math to her reading. A couple years back while lamenting my oldest daughter’s inability to process words phonetically, I commented how my next oldest kiddo was also struggling with reading - but it was because she wouldn’t put in the effort. I’ve been meaning to write this post for ages.

Starfall multiplication songs